February 3rd

If you have an AARP card, and hear the words, “A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…” you know most of the words of the song, and you can sing along in the car. OK, boomer. The “Day the Music Died” refers to the deaths of Buddy Holley, J.P. Richardson “The Big Bopper,” and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield on February 3, 1959.

In 1971, Don McLean released the song “American Pie.” If you are going to be a one-hit wonder. McLean had a pretty damned good one. Like a lot of words and phrases in popular songs, you enjoy the tune and don’t always know the meanings.

Charles Hardin Holly (no typo) was born in 1936 in Lubbock, Texas. His musical career began early. He opened for Elvis Presley in 1955 and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, the same year as The King. His band was known as the “Crickets.” That influenced a British band that came along later, also naming themselves after an insect.

Richard Steven Valenzuela was born in Los Angeles in 1941. He was a self-taught musician and due to his early success, a high school dropout. He performed on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in October of 1958 (when he would have been a senior in high school). He may have released the first live album in a concert at his former junior high school.

Jiles Perry Richardson Jr. was in Sabine Pass, Texas in 1930, later moving to Beaumont. He was working as a radio DJ who also played guitar. In 1958, he had written many songs (some of which later became hits for other artists including George Jones) and was taking off as a musical artist in his own right.

The music industry was unrecognizable to people today, as you sold forty-fives and toured in small venues to make a living. In late 1958 the “Winter Dance Party” tour was conceived and began in Milwaukee on January 23, 1959. Buddy Holly, Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Frankie Sardo set out on a twenty-four-day tour. A show was held every night, making midwestern winter travel arduous in buses. Holly’s drummer’s feet got frostbite in bus travel.

Holly decided to charter a four-engine plane to fly himself and two others ahead to rest up where the tour would join them. Crickets’ guitar player Tommy Allsup flipped a coin with Valens for a seat, which Valens won. Holly’s friend and bass player Waylon Jennings (yes, that one) gave up his seat to Richardson, who had the flu. The pilot of the plane was Roger Peterson, who was just twenty-one years old and NOT certified for ‘instrument-only’ flying. Four men died, and remarkably, thirteen more Winter Dance Party shows continued. Jennings took over vocals for Holly.

In 1978, a film, “The Buddy Holly Story” was released. I confess I have never seen it, I was in high school, who knew what mischief young Cary was involved in? In 1987, a biopic of Valens “La Bamba” was released which I did see. There has yet to be a movie made about the Big Bopper.

Sometime in the 1980s, late at night, I was at a convenience store waiting in line. On the counter, I saw a small rack of CDs, the type you could spin around to hold more offerings. In an endless wait, as someone presumably couldn’t find the exact box of Marlboros for a customer, I grabbed Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits for $3.99 or something. That was a good decision.

I am not a musician, nor am I a music critic. Many times, I have said my musical taste is a quarter-inch wide and a hundred miles deep. That being said, I loved that CD, and I have no idea where it is today. This I can say. The level of sophistication a twenty-two-year-old had in his songs, with the primitive technology of the day made me think “Wow, what if this man had lived?”

Honor them. Get out your record player, put the little yellow plastic insert in the hole in the middle, and place it on your turntable. Drop the needle and enjoy. Yeah, right. OK, stream their songs, and appreciate and remember these fine artists.